Mark Argent :: bloghttp://www.markargent.com/blog
Liberal Democrat politics and thoughtsWed, 07 Mar 2018 00:31:26 +0000en-GBhourly1Not dead yet: the Good Friday Agreementhttp://www.markargent.com/blog/good-friday-agreement/
http://www.markargent.com/blog/good-friday-agreement/#respondTue, 06 Mar 2018 08:25:06 +0000http://www.markargent.com/blog/?p=924Recently, various pro-Brexit voices have been claiming that the Good Friday Agreement is dead. There is certainly a big danger of it being a casualty of Brexit, but it is certainly not something to be sacrificed. Instead, it's worth thinking about why it is under strain — in order to save it.

]]>Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness, former adversaries working together after Good Friday Agreement

The Good Friday Agreement, signed on 10 April 1998, was a remarkable achievement. After an extended peace process, which had built up sufficient trust to make a breakthrough possible, it finally brought a way to share power between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, ending decades of armed conflict.

The problem was, and is, that there is legitimacy in the claims and the stories on both sides. Finding a route to the point when both communities can co-exist peacefully is the sanest way to peace. My reading of the story is that the fundamental change that made this possible was that the UK and Eire had both been in the EU for long enough for people to get used to it.

It is possible for communities to co-exist on a day-to-day basis, but the fundamental question which is hard to fudge is “on which side will you be if there is a war?” In other words, “Will you fight for Dublin or for London?”. Peace is possible when there has been enough peace and stability for long enough to mean that question is not at the back of people’s minds.

Within the framework of EU membership, the Good Friday agreement provided enough cross-border co-operation to work for the Catholics, and enough linkage to London to work for the Protestants. Though people didn’t use the term, it is a good federal solution, which enables people to co-exist without their differences pulling them apart.

At the moment the Brexit debate is clustering around membership of the Customs Union. If the UK and EU are not in a Customs Union, that means some sort of border with customs posts and action to stop smuggling on the Irish border. That’s unworkable in practice, and would highlight to Catholics a border that they find offensive. The other solution that has been touted is for the North to remain in the Customs Union, and customs posts at points of entry to the mainland. That separates the North from the rest of the UK in a way that Protestants would find just as offensive.

It seems the Brexiteers are attacking the Good Friday agreement on two fronts. One is that it embeds a co-operation which is hard to reconcile with Brexit. The other is that there has been a struggle to form a government in Northern Ireland.

The first of these is pure ideology: it treats the agreement as bad because it stands in the way of Brexit, as though Brexit must be achieved, whatever the cost. By an interesting coincidence, Jacob Rees-Mogg has recently written something arguing that the UK will leave the EU intact. At the best of times, that would be wishful thinking. But it tramples on the sensibilities of Irish Catholics in a way that would breathe life into the IRA.

The struggle to form a government is a symptom of where we now are rather than a reason to abandon the Good Friday Agreement. The Brexit process is already pulling at the fabric of Northern Ireland. At a recent street stall in Ware, it was people with Irish accents who were particularly vocal in support of EU membership: they remember The Troubles, and fear their return.

The point is that, when trust has been damaged, it is harder for people to work together. The Brexit process has already done significant damage. The UK overall voted differently from Northern Ireland, which challenges people’s sense of belonging. Theresa May’s decision to enter a pact with the Democratic Unionist Party leaves Catholics feeling excluded. It is almost inevitable that we have ended up with the DUP and Sinn Fein as the two major parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and that they should find it harder to co-operate than the once did.

Where this lands is either the need to cancel Brexit, or to pull off a major miracle to enable trust to be rebuilt despite what is going on. Only the first of these is credible, and the chances of the second are greatly undermined by people claiming that the agreement is already dead. My fear now is that cavalier comments from Brexit supporters will collide with Northern Irish reality in a particularly destructive way.

]]>http://www.markargent.com/blog/good-friday-agreement/feed/0False allegations against Jeremy Corbyn: chaos as things shift on Brexithttp://www.markargent.com/blog/false-allegations-jeremy-corbyn-chaos-things-shift-brexit/
http://www.markargent.com/blog/false-allegations-jeremy-corbyn-chaos-things-shift-brexit/#respondMon, 05 Mar 2018 18:42:26 +0000http://www.markargent.com/blog/?p=906On 26 February, Jeremy Corbyn gave a speech saying that Labour favoured remaining in customs union with the EU. The week leading up to that was dominated by said an absurd, untrue, and ultimately retracted, allegation that he had spied for Czechoslovakia. It seems like a testing of absurdity on the way to a wise position on Europe.

This is so absurd that the question it raises is “Why on earth did anyone believe it?”

In the middle of the storm, one comment caught my ear — Jeremy Corbyn saying that he had spoken with Czech diplomats because he wanted to hear both sides in the Cold War. An individual backbench MP won’t have had a huge effect, but advocating peace rather than war, and talking with the other side rather than demonising them, sounds like the conduct of a wise statesman.

So, why has this story blown up now? There is a political answer, and a below-the-surface one.

Below the surface

I keep going back to Melanie Klein’s insight that the sort of simple-but-intense thinking that dominates in babies continues under the surface even as we learn to operate in more sophisticated ways. At that very primitive level, things are stark, clustering round sharp binary contrasts of “good” and “bad” and strong emotions. That’s is part of how we do politics, and where we regress to at times of high anxiety, but it doesn’t cope with complex situations. It is where we can go when we need “enemies” and facts don’t matter.

On the streets in Ware that weekend, with East Herts for Europe, I was struck by the intensity of the support for Brexit from a small minority. Their positions didn’t seem particularly well-informed, and could be heard as anger at the evaporation of the Brexit vision they had been sold, but it also makes sense as a regression to this primitive level, away from the complexity of Brexit, which has been described as “trying to take the eggs out of an omelette”, to a place of raw fear and anger.

The political response

The days before Corbyn’s speech saw a persuasive piece in The Guardian arguing for continued membership of the Single Market and Customs Union, over the signatures of an impressive group of wise and experienced Labour figures, followed up by Keir Starmer announcing that it Labour backs remaining in the Customs Union.

The Tories went into the 2017 General Election promising a fundamentalist hard Brexit. Losing seats can’t be heard as giving them a mandate for that. This re-positioning of Labour begins to put the pressure on in style. It points to the big divide for the next General Election being between Tory Brexit fundamentalism and Labour acting in the pragmatic interests of the British people. Tories must be worried, but in its extremity and its absurdity, this was more than a crude ad hominem attack.

Melanie Klein’s insight is useful: it points to some Tories, under stress, not just grabbing at any excuse to demonise Jeremy Corbyn, but landing on something rooted in the polarities of the Cold War, as if hankering after a time when there were sharp contrasts of good and bad. In that mindset, it is easy to dismiss people as “traitors”. If Jeremy Corbyn was indeed seeking to understand both sides in the Cold War, then he was doing something wise and courageous. I can see why that would come as a threat to some of the more ardent, and less rational, proponents of Brexit.

But Corbyn is not the only person with wisdom and courage in the political world. The signatories to the Guardian article offer some striking examples from the Labour party. There are plenty more among Liberal Democrats, not least Vince Cable. The Tories who are beginning to break ranks over Europe are the group who will probably make the biggest difference to ending the damage of Brexit.

A hung parliament gives far more powers to the back benchers. Even as the present government seems to seek to sideline parliament in the EU Withdrawl Bill, the back benchers to whom the General Election transferred power are able to come into their own. Right now, there is a real prospect of the government being defeated over withdrawing from the Customs Union, and it is something which will remain in discussion.

The irony of this is that it is how most European parliaments work. In the process of trying to leave the EU, and going against the instincts of the more vocal Tories, reality is showing how European the UK has become. It’s not too late to recognise that reality.

A bizarre postscript

On the same morning that Jeremy Corbyn gave that speech, the Today programme covered a story that Winston Churchill might have had an affair. In a sense this is a non-story: does it matter? But purient interest in a famous figure is a great distraction.

Wilfred Bion suggested that two of the ways in which a groups handle anxiety is to get interested in an the actions of an individual (a leader) or a pair. One of the things the aristocracy do is to provide a constant stream of pairs to carry these projections. In those terms, Churchill having an affair sounds very much like a “bad pair” to demonise, just as the false allegations against Corbyn sound like an attempt to make him a “bad leader”. That says a lot for the dysfunction of the political system at the moment, as Brexit wreaks havoc with the collective unconscious as well as the economy.

]]>http://www.markargent.com/blog/false-allegations-jeremy-corbyn-chaos-things-shift-brexit/feed/0On the streets in Ware with East Herts for Europehttp://www.markargent.com/blog/streets-ware-east-herts-europe/
http://www.markargent.com/blog/streets-ware-east-herts-europe/#respondSat, 24 Feb 2018 21:11:14 +0000http://www.markargent.com/blog/?p=885I was out today with a group of people from East Herts for Europe in Ware. In among the leafleting and gathering 161 signatures on a petition for referendum on the terms of Brexit (once the government actually works out what those are, and actually manages some meaninful negotiations). There were some fascinating conversations.

]]>Some of the people from East Herts for Europe out on the streets of Ware on 24 February 2018

In the referendum campaign, I was focussed on Cambridge, but friends in Hertford and Stortford talk of street stalls getting significant opposition. The case for Europe was worth making and clearly needed to be made. The constituency was the closest in the country to 50:50.

Now the feel is different. It’s unwise to draw any conclusions from those who didn’t want to stop and talk, but conversations today were rich. Some shed light on people’s real worries over Brexit, and others on their attachment to it.

Messages of support for Remain

There were people who stopped to thank us for being visible. There were stories of people feeling gutted by the result and of people from elsewhere in the EU feeling unwelcome since the referendum.

At the end of a week in which has seen Conservatives Owen Paterson and Daniel Hannan, and Labour’s Kate Hoey question the future of the Good Friday agreement, and the Irish Foreign Minister spring to its defence, several Irish people expressed real concern at it’s possible unravelling. People in Ireland who remember the Troubles are painfully aware of the significance of a hard border, with customs and checkpoints — if the UK leaves the Customs Union those things will be needed, and inflame sensitivities on both sides. Peace was possible because the UK and Eire were both in the EU: it can’t be taken for granted.

There were people worried about travelling in the EU, and in particular about children and grandchildren in families where people have married across European borders and had thought their futures were secure thanks to the EU.

There were stories of pharmaceutical companies — large employers in the area — delaying investment until there is clarity on Brexit. The delay is hurting jobs and prosperity now. The brutal reality is that these are multi-national companies whose decisions to invest in the UK are being re-thought because a UK outside the EU is a much less attractive prospect, especially if we also crash out of the Single Market.

One person spoke of voting Remain, but now, with palpable sadness, feeling we should get on with it “even though it will be bad”. She hadn’t realised that the Article 50 notice can be withdrawn, and the wounds of the saga can be addressed.

In an area with a strong Tory vote, there was sadness and a sense of abandonment from pro-EU Tories, some openly shocked that the local Tory MP, Mark Prisk, having campaigned for us to remain in the EU, seems to have had a change of heart. In a sense, he is following his party’s manifesto, but, where the pro-Brexit Tories could be accused of not understanding the consequences of Brexit, he and the other “quiet Remainers” on the Tory benches, are letting their constituents down by standing by as the predicted problems come to pass.

From the Brexit side

Few people were expressing support for Brexit, but some of those who did, expressed it loudly.

There were people for whom “we won two world wars and shouldn’t give in now” — recycling memories of the war, and forgetting the horrors which led people to say “never again” — and Winston Churchill to talk of a “United States of Europe” as an alternative to war.

There were people worried that the NHS can’t cope with immigration — overlooking the staffing shortages being created by people from the rest of the EU being less willing to come to work in the UK since the referendu.

There were people worried about being “dictated to by the EU”, without realising how far we will be dictated to by the USA and China if we try to negotiate separate trade deals — without the EU behind us, trade deals with major powers are likely to be of the form “they draft, we sign”.

Sadly, there was one person who was angry because “Europe gave us nothing” in David Cameron’s “renegotiation” — clearly unaware of the Balance of Competences review which had said it was against the national interest to seek any significant changes (so the “re-negotiation” was the EU trying to make it look as if Cameron had achieved something, without doing any real damage to the UK or the rest of the EU).

I’m left wondering about the small minority of people expressing very vocal support of Brexit. Perhaps the same people would have said the same things a year ago, but I also wonder whether this is the surprise, anger and sense of betrayal from people who genuinely thought that Brexit offered a bright new future, and now watch the vision fade. I fear they are caught between people like me — naming some uncomfortable realities — and the Brexit-supporting politicians, repeating promises that look optimistic, with the whisker of suspicion that they might stick to their guns, even as those who voted for Brexit find themselves being harmed by it.

A referendum on the terms

We collected 161 signatures on a petition calling for a referendum on the terms of Brexit, trusting that this adds to the pressure. A referendum on the terms is Liberal Democrat policy, but it needs wider support to turn into reality.

One of the Irish people who stopped spoke of Eire’s two referenda on the Nice Treaty. His point was that many of those who voted against it the first time, were votoing as a protest and didn’t expect their side to win. He saw their two votes as a chance to register protest, and then a chance to have the real vote, and suspected the same would happen here.

Private Eye, 22 Feb 2018: is this the Brexit people voted for?

But the overwhelming point was that people voted without knowing what Brexit would actually mean. Nearly a year after the triggering of Article 50, it is still unclear. It might be undemocratic to keep voting until the answer is “yes”, but the “Leave&#148 option was so ill-defined that it would be even more undemocratic to assume that those who vote Leave in 2016 will think that what is on the table in 2019 is actually what they vote for.

I felt particularly sorry for someone who voted Remain, was distressed by the result, but now, in the swirling chaos of media stories about what Brexit may or may not mean, feels too bewildered to know what to think. Normally governments are there to produce wise government out of the chaos of reality, not to create paralysis by stirring up the chaos.

The Liberal Democrat angle

Brexit is bigger than any one party. I am proud that Hertford and Stortford Liberal Democrats were out in force, but glad that others are involved in East Herts for Europe, so that this is a cross-party grouping to do what is in the national interest.

]]>http://www.markargent.com/blog/streets-ware-east-herts-europe/feed/0A snapshot of the chaos of Brexithttp://www.markargent.com/blog/snapshot-chaos-brexit/
http://www.markargent.com/blog/snapshot-chaos-brexit/#commentsSun, 28 Jan 2018 12:50:31 +0000http://www.markargent.com/blog/?p=861A few months after the referendum I gave a conference paper where I suggested that Europe has been so important to the UK for so long that the referendum and its result had had a profound effect on the British political system, leaving it struggling to cope. The week of the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos has provided a striking example of this.

In the background of that paper was the thought that stable systems need some form of containment. That applies at lots of levels, from a small child feeling safe in the containment of its mother’s arms, through to people feeling an anxiety over immigration feeling the need for a country’s borders to be enforced to make them feel safe. Containment is particularly important when people feel vulnerable. It can be about actual physical needs, but is much more about managing anxiety. Some of this will seem irrational, but it makes sense if it is thought of as managing anxieties that are hard to express. Immigration is a good example because the economic evidence that it helps the economy, boosts living standards and doesn’t cost people their jobs doesn’t communicate at the same level as the raw emotional fears in people for whom life is uncomfortably fragile.

The UK’s connection with the rest of Europe is long and complicated. Waves of migration have interconnected us deeply. Even the fighting that has happened makes more sense if it’s thought of as fighting in a long-term and stable marriage. Some have gone as far as to describe the two world wars as having the viciousness of civil wars. We have always been a part of Europe, though it has been a complex story.

Since the UK joined the EU it has become easier to describe, because the present tense reality has some structures around it. The slight hitch here is that the wise thinking that has gone into building the structures of the EU doesn’t always work at the level of raw anxiety. The seemingly illogical and irrational arguments deployed by the Leave campaign make a horrible sense if their role was to stir up people’s fears. The flip side of the importance of Europe for the UK is that it was a good target for those fears — like someone kicking a wall in frustration, but not meaning to demolish the wall.

I could express this in terms of a basic fight-flight reaction, where anxiety gets people into a fight-flight response, which then coalesces around some sort of target to make it happen. This is actually nothing to do with the target — in this case the EU —and everything to do with whatever is going on in those emotions.

This makes some sense of the Cameron government’s failure to make plans for Brexit before the referendum, and the Leave campaign’s failure to present a coherent vision. For different reasons, Brexit was seen by both groups as a rebellion against the EU rather than the choice of something else. At an individual level, I have spoken with individuals who vote Leave because of a sense that life is very difficult, so a change was needed — without recognising that not all changes are for the better.

For people used to the containment offered by Europe in general, and the EU in particular, Brexit is a major emotional problem. It becomes impossible to blame the EU for things that were nothing to do with the EU. The familiar links and possibilities are suddenly challenged. That would anyway make life difficult, in a way that might have some echoes of the difficulty for an adult to cope with the sudden death of both parents, but is made orders of magnitude harder by having the formidably complex task of unravelling four decades of the intertwining of British and EU law and policy, and trying to plan for the future without knowing how things will be working between the UK and its nearest and biggest trading partner. On top of that, the EU has been active in protecting human rights and democratic functioning: attempts to get away from those aspects of the EU, not least in the EU Withdrawl Bill, should un-nerve people.

The fallout of this has seen all the political parties struggle. The Tories’ difficulties have been painfully obvious. Labour is in a bizarre place, with a leader who was not taken seriously when he first stood but has become unassailable at the same time as dividing the party. For the Liberal Democrats, it has been hard to get our message out and criticisms of Tim Farron’s leadership could be heard as expressions if the near-impossibility of the task. The SNP find their core policy, of Scots independence, is both made more likely by Brexit, and pushed off the agenda. And UKIP has been surreal.

In each case, leadership looks really difficult. At the moment, Vince Cable seems the most credible leader: his own attributes are considerable, but he also has the advantage that his party is not at war with itself over Brexit and support for EU membership among LibDem votes means he doesn’t need to struggle to avoid alienating those who voted Leave.

For Labour and the Conservatives, leadership looks nearly impossible. A leader can lead because their followers give them power, which is another way of saying someone is mobilised as a leader because of what the followers project onto them. But both parties, and their supporters, are deeply divided on Europe, so the projections are muddled and undermine the leaders’ authority. Under most circumstances this would be solved by leadership contest, but both parties are in situations which make that really difficult. Neither leader can prove their mandate by seeing off a challenge, or gain followers by showing strength.

This much could have been said at more-or-less any point since the referendum. But I’ll pick up the week of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, not because it is especially dysfunctional, but because the divisions have been most obvious. I’ll focus on the Tory situation because they are in the spotlight, as the party in government, though it is worth bearing in mind that the surreal situation for Labour is that the close result in the 2017 election was so much better than expected that it had the feeling of a victory, but without their policies hitting the harsh realities of government.

Polling

The week has seen two sharply contrasted polls. One from YouGov showed a small majority thinking the UK made the right decision over Brexit, for the first time since July 2017, while one from ICM for the Guardian puts Remain 16 points ahead. All polls have a margin of error. This difference is extreme, but does make sense if the system is itself chaotic.

Tory chaos

This week (leading up to 7 January 2018)…

Boris Johnson demanded more money for the NHS — having recently attracted derision for returning to the Leave campaign’s discredited claim that Brexit would bring an additional £350Million a week for the NHS and claimed that was an underestimate. He was censured for leaking the comments he was going to make in Cabinet before the Cabinet met. I wish I could dismiss him as a buffoon, but he is correctly gauging where one of the UK’s most sensitive spots is. Brexit will actually undermine the NHS by harming the economy, but in the irrational world of failed containment, this will get support.

Philip Hammond at Davos, said that Brexit should bring only very modest changes to the relationship with the EU, and was slapped down for it, though his words are wise, particularly from the person charged with the job of making the British economy work, and speaking at an economic forum.

Jacob Rees Mogg stridently put the case for an insanely-hard Brexit. Almost unbelievably, he did this in terms of the risk of the Tories losing the next election, rather than the national interest. I could lambast that, but if people’s eyes are off the ball because of the dysfunction brought by Brexit, it may be easier to get in touch with the fear of losing power than the real issues of the nation’s future. He is right that a soft Brexit means the status quo but with less influence — but that should be an argument for abandoning Brexit.

David Cameron was caught in an unguarded moment saying that Brexit had not been as bad as feared, which excited the pro-Brexit papers, and missed the fact that he wouldn’t talk the UK down in speaking with a major business leader, and that the predicted serious economic consequences of Brexit would kick in after leaving the single market and the customs union.

On the latter point, news that France was recruiting customs officers to deal with the problems that would arise from the UK leaving the customs union was painted by some as an act of hostility, yet the problem is surely with the British government for failing to alert people to the likely consequences of stumbling out of the Customs Union.

The Pound

The Brexit press got excited that the Pound was doing well against the Dollar, while the Telegraph pointed out that this was down to the weakness of the Dollar. Meanwhile, at Davos, Steve Mnuchkin argued for a weak Dollar and Trump seemed to push both ways. The wise conclusion is that it is rather complicated, but a weak Dollar does not mean a strong Pound (and a comparison with the Chinese Yuan is sobering). The Brexiteer excitement is premature, unless its seen as emotions getting the better of reality.

Growth

Even more extreme was the Brexit Press getting excited by a little economic growth “project cheer” according to The Sun. That’s in stark contrast to Mark Carney pointing out that the UK economy is 1% smaller than it would have been if the vote had gone the other way.

The Presidents’ Club fiasco

In the middle of all this, came the unrelated story of a dinner at the Presidents’ Club — a gathering of wealthy men, behaving badly towards their female “hostesses”. There’s no reason to defend what went on there, but a Radio 4 comedian on The News Quiz hit the spot brilliantly by giving an account as if he had been there, and then “in case anyone was looking forward to getting upset” said he hadn’t. The story is unrelated. But without wishing to defend what went on there, it did become a very big story — curiously big. It actually reads as a giant piece of displacement — finding a legitimate object of anger onto which lots of feelings are piled, which take attention away from the fears associated with the loss of containment around Europe.

Joining up the dots

On top of whatever is going on around the Presidents Club, the Tory chaos looks more like a failure of thinking and the putting of fantasies of Europe ahead of reality. That makes total sense when the anxiety is raw and deep, mobilising the primitive feelings that surface when containment is damaged. It argues for the emergence of a good leader, wise enough to provide adequate containment. In brackets, that would inevitably point toward reversing Brexit, but that makes addressing the emotional need for it into a very high priority — a wise leader would look at why people are unhappy, rather than help them on the path to where their unhappiness leads them. Instead, there is a story of Gavin Williamson being positioned for a possible Tory leadership challenge. That’s comically far from wise leadership, and the story of him confessing to Theresa May at having flirted with a female colleague is astonishing: I can’t work out whether he’s getting the career-ending mis-judgement in early, or whether this is supposed to elicit support.

In the middle of all this — and largely un-noticed — came another sobering report from the House of Lords on the likely economic consequences of Brexit. This isn’t peers being out of touch: it’s well-informed peers free to say what others dare not because they don’t have to worry about the electoral consequences of naming reality.

This hasn’t been a particularly exceptional week, but it does show the dysfunctionality the referendum has brought. Heaven help the civil servants trying to sort this mess out behind the scenes.

]]>http://www.markargent.com/blog/snapshot-chaos-brexit/feed/1Responding to Labour Remainhttp://www.markargent.com/blog/responding-labour-remain/
http://www.markargent.com/blog/responding-labour-remain/#respondSat, 27 Jan 2018 11:44:37 +0000http://www.markargent.com/blog/?p=853Recently a friend and Liberal Democrat activist showed me an email from Labour Remain — formed at the start of 2018 and claiming significant support. This comes on the back of a survey showing that 78% of Labour members disagree with Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition to a referendum on the terms of Brexit How should Liberal Democrats respond?

Brexit is a profound threat to British values, the economy and the very integrity of the United Kingdom. In that sense it needs us all to pull together.

The country is in a crisis. We have been so intertwined with the rest of Europe, for so long, that the referendum result has had a deeply destructive effect on public life. Parliament seems paralised. Andrew Adonis has written of a Brexit-induced “nervous breakdown” in Whitehall. The Conservatives and Labour seem massively dysfunctional. There are stories of moderate councillors in both parties being de-selected. Most of the pro-Remain majority in the Commons is silent or vanquished. My excitement over the formation of Labour Remain is more than a little tempered by the lurch to the Left in their recent National Executive Committee elections and stories of MPs being threatened with de-selection. Faced with Brexit, ths has all the wisdom of re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. We need to think differently.

For Liberal Democrats, the enormity of the task can make us escape to the local. That’s always been important to the party, but it can become a displacement, making us fail to engage adequately on the ground with Brexit and its consequences. That short-changes the nation, deep principles in the party, and the many people who have joined us since the referendum. It’s worth remembering that a recent poll put support for Remain at 55%, with even greater support for a referendum on the terms.

In some parts of the country this will be sounding so obvious that it doesn’t need saying. But there are many places which, a few years ago, would have struggled to campaign in more than a handful of wards, but have seen their membership increase three or four fold since 2015. This makes all sorts of things possible in addition to that targetting.

If we were going into a General Election, there would be the inevitable need to target. Instead, faced with the slow-motion car crash that is Brexit, it’s time to help shape the resistance. That means putting the case for a referendum on the terms, and also helping people through the painful realisation that the Brexit they voted for is not what is emerging.

We can have the biggest impact in places where people will be surprised to hear from us. This is about making a difference — directly, by swaying opinion, and indirectly by pressure on sitting MPs.

It can be a shock to a local party that’s used to thinking of itself as small and now finds it has 400 members, but on those numbers, a typical constituency would need each member to deliver little more than 100 leaflets and contribute a couple of pounds to the printing to reach every door. It’s a powerful statement of conviction on Brexit to be delivering regularly in constituencies we are unlikely to win.

Going alone like this is not to undervalue Labour Remain, but it does avoid getting sucked into Labour’s struggles. The best way to put pressure on Labour and the Conservatives is to stick to our values and push against Brexit, helping to turn the tide of public opinion that will bring those parties with it.

]]>http://www.markargent.com/blog/responding-labour-remain/feed/0Mental health realities… and Donald Trumphttp://www.markargent.com/blog/mental-health-realities-donald-trump/
http://www.markargent.com/blog/mental-health-realities-donald-trump/#respondWed, 17 Jan 2018 08:20:20 +0000http://www.markargent.com/blog/?p=828A couple of things have come across my radar recently which highlight the stark realities of life for people with mental health difficulties. By contrast, Donald Trump's behaviour is distasteful by most standards, but questioning his mental health doesn't help people with real mental health issues — or excuse his behaviour.

Shortly before Christmas came the news that the High Court had ruled that changes to the rules around Personal Independence Payments for people with mental health conditions were “blatantly discriminatory”. The conclusion won’t have been a surprise to people involved with mental illness, and the decision was good news, but the facts that it had to go to court, and that PIP is needed to support people with poor mental health, highlight some of the grim realities.

Later the same morning, I crossed the footbridge by Jesus Lock in Cambridge where there were some striking pieces of “yarn bombing” — effectively knitted sculptures — by TigerChilli. In themselves they were striking, but what particularly caught my eye were two phrases on the accompanying text: “For those of you living with depression or illness, missing or mourning a loved one, caring for a sick relative, or if you simply find this time of year difficult”, and “To the courageous woman I met last year who said ‘The sunshine’ yarnbomb saved her life and prevented her jumping off the bridge, I thank you for sharing this with me. I am extremely moved by this.” The yarnbomb sculptures and the words speak volumes.

I’ve had those two experiences in mind in the recent media debate around Donald Trump’s mental health. This sparks an immediate worry. At the best of times it is not easy for someone to seek help over mental illness. Fearing that they will be seen as “like Trump” makes this much worse.

The American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater Rule” is intended to stop psychiatrists commenting on the mental health of public figures, and to protect them from pressure to do this. A diagnosis needs in-depth examination in person. A diagnosis on the basis of how someone is reported in the media is likely to generate more heat than light.

In Trump’s case, what’s coming into the public domain could support a wide range of readings. People describe him as “emotional”, “unstable” and “erratic”. But in the election campaign, his fumbling and ill-formed sentences won him the support of enough voters to get him elected: where they incompetent, calculated, or lucky? Are his outrageous comments now anything more than a way to deflect attention (and appeal to the prejudices of some of his supporters)? On 11 January, Trump made a deeply-offensive comment about “shithole countries” and the furore around these has neatly deflected attention from another comment, that the DACA programme, adopted by the Obama administration and benefitting around 880,000 people who came to the US as undocumented child immigrants, was “probably dead” (the less charitable would also notice that it coincides with a story of a large sum being paid to silence a sex scandal previously admitted). These sound like the actions of a scoundrel, not of someone who is ill and deserves support.

The bigger picture is that mental illness is something widely feared. It is stigmatised because it is too close for comfort for all of us. Stigmatising Trump as “mentally ill” pushes mental illness away, and absolves those who voted for him — though his behaviour since becoming president is horribly consistent with what he did as a candidate.

It’s sometimes helpful to think in systemic terms, which would suggest that the problem is not Trump, but the malaise in American society which meant people voted for him in large numbers. Removing him on grounds of supposed illness, or impeaching him, won’t deal with why people thought he was a good choice, which is the urgent, and unaddressed, problem.

In the context of politics, we should criticise Trump for what he actually does, rather than speculate on why he does it. For mental health, the plea has to be for more resources to help people who need help, rather than piling up the stigma: mental illness affects enough people to mean it is everyone’s problem.

]]>http://www.markargent.com/blog/mental-health-realities-donald-trump/feed/0Brexit: a callous attack on those least able to bear ithttp://www.markargent.com/blog/brexit-callous-attack-least-able-bear/
http://www.markargent.com/blog/brexit-callous-attack-least-able-bear/#respondWed, 27 Dec 2017 17:45:50 +0000http://www.markargent.com/blog/?p=818The collision of stories in the last few days sends a shiver down the spine. At Christmas, there are grinding stories of real poverty, and of the super rich who donated to the Leave campaign complaining at HMRC asking them to pay their taxes.

]]>Early last autumn I blogged about Brexit as a new class war — already by then it was seeming like a cynical attempt of a wealthy minority to mobilise the frustrations of the most disadvantaged to vote in a way that helped the wealthy minority. I hesitate to lay that at the door of the Conservatives because that is a deep betrayal of the “one nation conservatism”, which deserves respect, and took us into the EU, displaced by something far nastier.

Then there was a story of “the establishment’s tax revenge” on donors to the Leave campaign. Except that it’s nothing of the sort. Reading the article, it appears that HMRC are just applying their rules. The “bias” appears to be because the affect individuals making substantial donations. It highlights the fact that a small number of very wealthy people made substantial donations to Leave. This is perfectly legal, and was their choice. But one has to ask whether this super-wealthy paying to ensure that the voices of the “left behind” we’re heard, or paying to get what meets their own interests.

#UniversalCredit is working well but inaccurate claims that claimants are not getting timely support are causing unnecessary anxiety.

Tim Farron injected realism and honesty by replying:

David, this is a load of rot! The people in abject poverty, using food banks, who I see in my surgery are not suffering from ‘inaccurate claims’ they are suffering from an underfunded system, implemented badly. Accept responsibility and fix it!

Showings that this mentality is not confined to the UK, Donald Trump owed a great deal of his electoral success to mobilising those in the US who have suffered financially. But instead of delivering for them in government, his widely-reported comment to wealthy supporters at Mar-a-lago was “you all just got a lot richer“, with analyst suggesting that he had personally gained $15 million.

On both sides of the Atlantic it sounds those who have suffered economically have been duped into voting in a way that benefits a coterie of the wealthy at their expense.

]]>http://www.markargent.com/blog/brexit-callous-attack-least-able-bear/feed/0Anxieties put onto a royal engagementhttp://www.markargent.com/blog/anxieties-put-onto-royal-engagement/
http://www.markargent.com/blog/anxieties-put-onto-royal-engagement/#respondThu, 30 Nov 2017 11:43:23 +0000http://www.markargent.com/blog/?p=807Hearing the BBC coverage of the engagement of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle, a friend tweeted in frustration that the Brexit debate would look rather different if the BBC put as much effort into describing the details of our relationship with the EU as they did the details of the relationship between the prince and his fiancée. He has a point.

Cynics would note that this announcement eclipsed the news that the government had finally published the Brexit impact reports — but in a form so redacted as to deserve fierce criticism, and was attempting to restrict amendments to the Budget, with the implication that this is an attempt to rig parliament to avoid defeat.

I think the cynics are wrong. With the way the Brexit saga is unraveling, it’s hard to imagine any day on which the announcement of a royal engagement would not have seemed like an attempt to distract attention from a piece of bad news.

Where it actually sends me is to Wilfred Bion’s idea of “basic assumptions”. His suggestion is that, under our more sophisticated functioning, there lies a layer of quite raw being, formed in early childhood, that tends to come to the surface at times of great anxiety or confusion, and shows itself in what we collectively end up doing, rather than rationally thinking. Bion identified three patterns: a raw fight/flight response, dependency on a leader, and focusing on a couple. The last of those isn’t exactly about sex, but is closer to the comfort and security a small child might get from being with a couple: sex is there, unspoken and intuited in the background. Bion suggests this is one of the things we look for in the aristocracy. His point is well made in the excitement around this prospective royal wedding. As Harry is (at least) fifth in line to the throne, this isn’t about watching a couple likely to become King and Queen. The astonishing level of interest is much more about what this particular wedding distracts us from.

Republicans will doubtless huff and puff at the prospect of a royal wedding, but this rather misses the point of the emotional need being expressed.

Dependency on feudal leaders has been the norm for much of human history. We’re adapting to a different way of being and that isn’t straightforward: arguably it is more just and more fair, but also more complex, and it’s not so easy to work out what to do with the emotions that would once have been masked in loyalty to a feudal lord.

Today, doubtless, the stories of the forthcoming wedding will have a fairy-tale “prince and princess” feel. It’s not that long since royal marriages were about political expediency. Tales of queens being encouraged to “lie back and think of England” are a reminder that there were nasty layers below the myth. Prince Harry’s mother was deeply wounded in a different way by the pressures of contemporary monarchy.

A human need was met by having a simple social structure built round loyalty to monarchs — even though that included the brutality of mediæval warfare. It made for a relatively simple world which must have seemed more-or-less comprehensible.

Today, no-one expects a monarch to don armour and lead their troops into battle. The fairytale orince and princess might give some hint of the seeming-stability of those days in the face of the enormous complexity of modern life. Contemporary warfare is far too destructive to be contemplated as a means of diplomacy. One of the tragedies of the Brexit debate is that the EU offers a credible and consensual alternative to the violence of the past, but it takes us into new territory, needing new — and more civilised — ways of being. Cheering when a prince gets married is no big deal, and might bring a temporary escape from the anxieties of where we now are. But a nostalgic flight to the past is highly dangerous, because that past was pretty grim. Fusing its mindset with modern technology appreciably worse.

My friend was right. Our media should be resisting the escape to fantasy offered by the prospect of a royal wedding and actually giving some well-informed comment on how the EU works, so that we can explore it as part of twenty first-century reality, rather than through the folklore around a glorious past that never was.

]]>http://www.markargent.com/blog/anxieties-put-onto-royal-engagement/feed/0Catalonia: the case for a federal Europehttp://www.markargent.com/blog/catalonia-case-federal-europe/
http://www.markargent.com/blog/catalonia-case-federal-europe/#respondSun, 29 Oct 2017 11:35:51 +0000http://www.markargent.com/blog/?p=795The increasing tensions in Spain, leading up to the Catalan parliament's unilateral declaration of independence on 27 October, offer a strong case for a more federal Europe, made stronger by the lack of other viable options.

]]>In the distant past, this is something that would have been settled on the field of battle. Spain would seek to put down the province declaring independence, and Catalonia would have resisted.

In the twenty-first century, there’s reasonable hope that this won’t end in bloodshed. There’s a vestige in that older way of thinking in the speed with which Spain suspended Catalan autonomy, calling fresh elections, and the threats to arrest the (now ousted) Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont. From the outside, it feels like a game of double bluff, but one in which every twist tears at the self-understanding of the many who see themselves as both Catalan and Spanish, making it harder to find a negotiated solution.

In a dis-spiriting parallel with Brexit, the near-impossibility of establishing an independent state seem not to impinge on the desire for it (countries can only join the EU with the agreement of all existing members, and Spain would be likely to veto membership). The sense is of poorly and partially articulated grievances leading to actions that make things much worse.

For the EU this presents a dilemma. Donald Tusk quickly came out with a statement saying that, the declaration changes nothing, and the EU will deal only with Madrid. In one sense he has no choice: for the time being this is an internal matter for a member state. In the short term, that would come under pressure only if Spain cracks down on Catalonia in a way that calls into question its commitment to the basic ideals of the Union. That’s possible, and there was pressure for action on that basis against Hungary in May 2017, but the hope is that things won’t get that bad.

But the other side of the EU’s dilemma is that this does change everything.

There have been rumours of Russian-run twitter bots stoking up support for Catalonian independence (there were rumours of similar interference in the Brexit campaign). But with the exception of Russia, no-one stands to gain from civil unrest and deepening divisions in Spain/Catalonia.

But globalisation means national governments have far less ability to act unilaterally than they did. Power is heading away from national governments, both to supra-national bodies and regional ones. In the structures of the EU there is a balance between power held by national governments, and exercised through the Council of Ministers, and Europe-wide influence through the Parliament and the Commission. If the EU moves further in a federal direction, then subsidiarity means things done centrally that need to be done there, and all other powers being as close as possible to those affected. That means significant autonomy for regions. It means Catalans having significant self-determination without ceasing to be Spanish or European.

In the grand scheme of things, the nation state is a new idea. In feudal times, what matter was which monarch or noble had dominion over which area. Disputes were settled by force. The Reformation could be claimed as the time when the modern nation state starts to appear, but it is not the only way of being, or the only way of being European.

Catalonia, Northern Ireland and Scotland are three glaring examples of places where there national identity is complicated. If people have to decide which side they fight on, things are black and white. But if we can pull back from that then things are more subtle. Nationhood can be about self-identification and self-understanding. There’s a parallel with football. Manager Bill Shankley went down in history for saying “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I’m very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.” A properly federal Europe offers a way for a multitude of deeply-held self-understandings to co-exist, crucially, without needing to trample each other. At its best, the European ideal offers a way to cherish diversity which is built into the structures of the European institutions.

If the UK goes ahead with Brexit, it places itself outside these structures. The one credible argument for Brexit is that the deepening of a federal Europe would be easier without the UK. The frustration here is that, where the rest of Europe hears “federal” as about devolving power, the public discourse in the UK says the opposite. Already one of the most centralised countries in the EU, we project our centralising tendencies.

But this is 2017, and things are not quite as they look. Quite where the Catalonian declaration will lead is not clear, but it seems unlikely to lead to the fully-independent state it professes. In the UK, the Eurosceptic Daily Express ran an article criticising the EU for not intervening, though it is more given to scare stories which accuse the EU of interfering in the UK.

For now, supporters of Brexit would be wise not to judge Spain too harshly. If things go wrong there, article 7 of the Treaty on the European Union does provide a mechanism for the EU to act when a country is abandoning European values. But if the UK were not on it way out of the EU, we too could expect others in the EU to start to think about invoking article 7 in response to the brazen behaviour of the British government over Brexit, not least in trying to sideline the courts and parliament, particularly over the EU Withdrawl Bill.

A very primitive response to anxiety is splitting: my nation, tribe or group become “good” and all others become “bad”. There’s no grey in that. There’s also no realism. My group becomes “good” just because it is my group. It needs something to affirm other ways of being to tilt the balance, especially when there are real causes for anxiety (as there are now with global changes). At an abstract level federalism does this, by tilting the scale in favour of many different groups finding ways to co-exist. The EU was born out of the wreckage of two world wars, where that splitting led to horrific levels of death and suffering. Right now, the real causes of anxiety are global things. Acting them out buy splitting can only make things worse — whether that is splitting Catalonia from Spain, Scotland from the UK, or the UK from the EU. Finding the stability that means different self-identities can co-exist and flourish is a very different proposition.

For now, it is hard to see the Catalonia saga ending well, unless it is heard as a clarion call for a more fully-federal Europe. An increasingly globalised world, where Europe faces growing challenges from other parts of the world, is a powerful argument for a United States of Europe, doing centrally those things best done centrally, and devolving everything else. The tragic irony is that the phrase “United States of Europe” was coined by Winston Churchill, from the country poised to stumble out of the EU, and the political party at the heart of the stumbling: hopefully it is not too late to heed his wisdom.

]]>http://www.markargent.com/blog/catalonia-case-federal-europe/feed/0Theresa May in an impossible positionhttp://www.markargent.com/blog/theresa-may-impossible-position/
http://www.markargent.com/blog/theresa-may-impossible-position/#respondSat, 28 Oct 2017 09:52:22 +0000http://www.markargent.com/blog/?p=785Are we right to mock Theresa May, or is she caught in the impossible position of trying to deal with the wreckage of her predecessor's mistakes, over Europe and in calling a referendum without planning for both possible outcomes, and the divisions in her own party?

]]>Almost since the moment when she became Prime Minister it has been tempting to mock Theresa May. From her 2016 conference speech, when she seemed to have abandoned her previous support for EU membership and managed the meaningless “Brexit means Brexit”, through vacuous comments on the “will of the people”, to her performances as the “Strong and stable” “Maybot” in the 2017 General Election.

But is this fair? Her disastrous speech speech to the 2017 Conservative Party Conference begins to flag up another side. As it stands, she may well go down in history as the most unfortunate Prime Minister in a very long time. In the long view of history, she may get credit for courage in an impossible situation, and come to be seen as one of the high-profile victims of Brexit.

That conference speech said more than its words. Letters falling off a sign, someone playing a prank, and a nasty cough could be seen as bad luck. But things are rarely as simple as that, and it can be worth asking what is happening unconsciously in the seemingly-accidental.

There probably is someone who watched the letters fall with acute professional embarrassment, but that sort of thing is very rare at party conferences. I doubt that this was deliberate, but did something lead them not to be as careful as usual? Someone gave her a fake P45 “from Boris Johnson”. A prank like that is also possible but rare, and happened to happened at this conference, and got attention rather than shock in the media. It made much more of a splash than the moment at last year’s conference when Boris Johnson was accosted about his referendum lie of £350 million a week for the NHS if we vote to leave the EU. But by any standards, that challenge Johnson was far more justified. And that cough. Ever since Freud wrote up the story of a patient with a persistent cough with no apparent medical cause, psychoanalysts’ ears have pricked up when people develop unexplained coughs.

Theresa May is in an unenviable position. Her time in No10 is marred by her predecessor’s mis-judgement over the referendum. This is not so much that people voted against the side he was on, as it was his gross failure either to plan for a Leave vote (so people had a choice between two credible options), and his failure to recognise the frustrations which were expressed in that vote. It feels as if an attempt to silence his critics by calling their bluff failed. Tragically, many of those who voted Leave stand to suffer from the consequences of Brexit if it actually happens. A wise leader would instead have engaged with their frustrations. A wise politician would have done that in a way that exposed the fantasies on which the Eurosceptics’ case is built and drawn support from people whose “Leave” vote reflected a sense of being ignored. As it stands, the situation May inherited reeks of the national interest coming second to a Tory instinct to hang on to power.

In 2016 Theresa May had no choice over Brexit. It’s not possible to hold a referendum and then ignore it. If she had gone against it, she would have fueled the frustrations and anger of those who voted Leave. Having campaigned to remain in the EU, and being advised by a civil service that is predominantly in favour of EU membership, she must know the damage likely to flow from Brexit. She’s caught in the unenviable position of following a course she must know is against the national interest.
If the 2017 general election had produced a large Conservative majority, she might have faced down the eurosceptics in her own party, but she is now utterly at their mercy. In the Tory leadership contest, I read Angela Leadsom’s withdrawal as the Conservative party’s ruthless quest for power asserting itself, pushing aside a candidate guaranteed to lose a general election in favour of one who might pull of a miracle. But now she is a wounded leader at the head of a bitterly-divided party. Labour under Jeremy Corbyn turned out to be more electable than most thought and his authority has grown as hers has faded. For now, he is in the enviable position of being able to present himself as a man of principle because he’s not in danger of exposing the weakness of his own policies by having to implement them.
Even that ruthless Tory instinct for power is a problem. The Brexit negotiations have been described as the mixing of incompetence with an overwhelming sense of entitlement to power from David Davies, colliding with the professionalism of Michel Barnier and the European institutions. That sense of entitlement to power will need someone to blame when it unravels, and the ruthlessness with which the Conservatives disposed of Margaret Thatcher is a reminder of what may be in store.

No wonder Theresa May had a cough.

Life would have been easier for her if she should have stood aside and let Angel Leadsom become Prime Minister, but if there is anything in then “one nation” conservatism she claimed when she entered No.10, that would have gone against the grain, knowing what damage Leadsom would done on the way to electoral defeat. Perhaps she should face down Boris Johnson, but she can’t do that without creating a natural focus for opposition, able to pedal fantasies about Brexit without risking being exposed when then fail.
And “soft Brexit”, though an attractive idea, doesn’t really exist. It amounts to EU membership without the influence. Early in the year, eurosceptics might have entertained a fantasy of a closer relationship with the USA filling the void left by the EU. But Trump’s behaviour has blown that possibility apart, and the photos of May and Trump from soon after his inauguration now look stomach-churning.

For now, the range of amendments proposed to the EU Withdrawl Bill (trailed as the “Great Repeal Bill”) means, at the very least, its weaknesses will be exposed. She would be very lucky not to lose on some of them. That process alone may be enough to torpedo Brexit, or at least, to remove the possibility of the UK walking away with no deal. May could hope that Parliament will save her the job of stopping it. In reality, the debates are more likely to stop short of that, and instead just highlight the harm in the course she is stuck to.

Recently, Alistair Campbell wrote a piece for the Guardian outlining the speech Theresa May should be preparing to give, to explain the tough decision that Brexit can’t go aheard. The pressure is piling on.

May is in an impossible position. She can’t go forward with Brexit without doing real harm to the economy. She can’t wriggle out of it without inflaming the divisions exposed by the referendum. Campbell’s draft speech is good, but, at the moment, it would need someone of Churchill-like standing to pull it off. The case might get easier to make as Brexit unravels, but I can understand those who voted Leave because life is difficult attributing mounting difficulties to the fact that we’ve not left yet, and jumping the opposite way.

Turning into the “Maybot” under pressure is the opposite of the Churchillian rhetoric that would be needed to explain that it’s a ghastly mess, where people have been lied to, and rally the country behind another solution. Perhaps in the long term, people will conclude that whoever moved into No10 last summer would be destroyed by Brexit and look kindly on her self-sacrifice. In the mean time, we now need to ask what lifeline she needs, and act out of the human decency on which the European project is founded. May is the Prime Minister we have, and there’s a distinct shortage of people who could have the credibility to pull us back from the brink of Brexit. The question for now is those of us who support EU membership can help her steer out of this mess.